SW(Final8/31) Written by Allan B. Ho and Dmitry Feofanov
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As maestro Ashkenazy said, what we’re interested in is the truth. And I want to make clear that we never started out in this book to praise Volkov. In fact, we wrote the complete article and then showed it to Solomon Volkov. Dmitry and I had an agreement from the start that whatever we found — [even] if we found conclusively that Testimony was a fraud — that’s what our book would be [about]. [. . .] when Solomon Volkov first read the book, he made two comments. The first was ‘Do you have to repeat all those negative things that people have said about me?’ And it’s quite overwhelming. No one can accuse us of leaving out very negative things that have been said about him. That was part of the official record. The other thing he said was that Fay, Taruskin, Brown, and even [he] himself are really insignificant in the big picture — that what’s important is the truth about Shostakovich. And that changed the thrust of our book. Initially we were just responding to the allegations. You know, it would have worked out better for me, as a card-carrying musicologist, if I had attacked Solomon, because that’s how Laurel Fay became known as a Shostakovich expert. I was very skeptical, and Dmitry can confirm this. And, in fact, you may be surprised to know that the first time I met Solomon in person was last night, because I did not want to be viewed as a friend of Solomon Volkov. We corresponded, we spoke on the phone, but it was important to me, as a musicologist with a reputation of my own to defend, that I had to look at this thing objectively. For six years, I worked on this [Shostakovich Reconsidered]. I was initially convinced by Laurel Fay’s article, which I took at face value. I had to be persuaded myself. 81 Brown’s own selective scholarship is evident repeatedly in A Shostakovich Casebook. For example, on p. 257 he states that Ian MacDonald ‘acknowledges that musicologist Laurel Fay proved conclusively that Volkov lied about how he put Testimony together’, then on the next page quotes his statement about Testimony from 1990: ‘the detective work of Laurel Fay . . . has established beyond doubt that the [Volkov] book is a dishonest presentation’. However, he does not quote any of MacDonald’s later statements. In August 1995, MacDonald noted: ‘Were I to revise The New Shostakovich, I would certainly alter or eliminate those observations on Testimony [in my book]’ (Shostakovich Reconsidered, p. 117, note 8). Moreover, in an interview available at the ‘Music Under Soviet Rule’ website since summer 1998 and later published posthumously in DSCH Journal, 20, January 2004, p. 25, one finds: ‘You say in The New Shostakovich that “Testimony is a realistic picture of Dmitri Shostakovich — it just isn’t a genuine one”. Do you stand by that?’ IM: ‘No. Allan and Dmitry have blown that one to smithereens’. MacDonald’s changed position is further evident in the latest edition of The New Shostakovich, Pimlico, London, 2006, pp. 8–9, revised by Raymond Clarke based on the author’s written documents (hereafter MacDonald, The New Shostakovich, rev. edn.). The following appears immediately after his original words: [. . .] after the collapse of the USSR in 1991, many former Soviet citizens who had known Shostakovich were able to speak freely and most of them supported Testimony. At a regional meeting of the American Musicological Society in Chicago, Illinois on 4 October 1997, Allan B. Ho and Dmitry Feofanov presented, for the first time, some of the new evidence assembled in their then forthcoming book Shostakovich Reconsidered. The book appeared in 1998, and its probing investigation of factors contingent upon the authenticity of Testimony and the veracity of its contents presented a convincing case for regarding the memoirs as genuine. Clarke also mentions on p. xix that MacDonald wrote an introduction for the paperback edition of The New Shostakovich (issued in 1991) that ‘took a more positive view of Solomon Volkov’s participation in the preparation of Testimony’, but that ‘the new publisher, Oxford University Press [which much later would print Fay’s book], rejected the introduction and merely reprinted the original edition without one’. 21 2. Flora Litvinova and the ‘Smoking Gun’ In Shostakovich Reconsidered we called attention, for the first time, to an important piece of evidence that corroborates the genesis of Testimony. Included in Flora Litvinova’s reminiscences, written in the late 1980s 82 for Elizabeth Wilson’s Shostakovich: A Life Remembered (1994), but not printed therein, is a statement from Shostakovich to Litvinova that is akin to the ‘smoking gun’ in a murder trial. Litvinova writes: in the last years of his life we met rarely, and not for long, or accidentally. And once, at such a meeting, Dmitry Dmitryevich said: ‘You know, Flora, I met a wonderful young man — a Leningrad musicologist (he did not tell me his name — F. L.). This young man knows my music better than I do. Somewhere, he dug everything up, even my juvenilia’. I saw that this thorough study of his music pleased Shostakovich immensely. ‘We now meet constantly and I tell him everything I remember about my works and myself. He writes it down, and at a subsequent meeting I look it over’. 83 In an attempt to dismiss the importance of this evidence, Paul Mitchinson in A Shostakovich Casebook suggests that Shostakovich’s statement was not about Testimony at all, but about Volkov’s earlier book, Young Composers of Leningrad: Litvinova wrote that her ‘last conversation (razgovor) with Dmitri Dmitrievich took place at the House of Creativity in Ruza in 1970 or 1971 [that is, before Volkov claims to have begun meeting with Shostakovich for Testimony]. He had returned from having treatment at Dr. Ilizarov’s clinic [in Kurgan]’. (Her final talk with the composer does not appear to have been the ‘smoking gun’ conversation, which must have taken place even earlier.) . . . So what could Shostakovich have been talking about in his conversation with his old friend Flora Litvinova? Based on the likely timing of this conversation — the late 1960s — I speculate that it could have had something to do with the preface Shostakovich wrote for Still other examples of Brown’s selective scholarship are easy to find: he quotes Maxim Shostakovich up to 1991, but omits his more recent statements in favor of Testimony and Volkov; he reprints only positive reviews of Fay’s book and only critical ones of Shostakovich Reconsidered and The New Shostakovich; he includes Fanning’s response to Allan Ho’s AMS paper (1998), but does not reproduce the paper itself, which was highly critical of Fay and Brown for, ironically, their selective reporting of evidence. For proper context, we reproduce Ho’s complete paper as well as his response to Fanning’s remarks on pp. 261–71 below. 82 Fay, A Shostakovich Casebook, p. 54. 83 Flora Litvinova, ‘Vspominaya Shostakovicha’ (‘Remembering Shostakovich’), Znamya, 12, December 1996, pp. 168–69; first translated in Shostakovich Reconsidered, p. 251. 22 Volkov’s first book, Molodye kompozitory Leningrada [Young Leningrad Composers] (Leningrad: Sovetskii kompozitor, 1971). Volkov claims that the original preface was autobiographical in nature and based heavily on the composer’s recollections of his youth. Litvinova has Shostakovich referring to his ‘youthful compositions’ (detskie sochinenie [sic] 84 ) in his conversations with the unnamed musicologist. My theory is not airtight. Shostakovich allegedly told Litvinova that they met ‘constantly’ and talked about ‘everything’ (Volkov told me he could not remember how many times he met with Shostakovich while preparing the preface to Young Leningrad Composers). But it seems to me a more convincing explanation of Litvinova’s account than the alternatives. 85 In fact, Mitchinson distorts what Volkov has said about the Preface to Young Composers of Leningrad. Volkov never claimed that ‘the original preface was autobiographical in nature’. Here is the passage in Testimony: I wrote to Shostakovich with a request for a preface. He replied at once, ‘I’ll be happy to meet with you’, and suggested a time and place. According to my plan, Shostakovich would write about the ties between the young Leningraders and the Petersburg school of composition. At our meeting I began talking to him about his own youth, and at first met with some resistance. He preferred to talk about his students. 86 Mitchinson also says that ‘Litvinova has Shostakovich referring to his “youthful compositions” (detskie sochinenie) in his conversations with the unnamed musicologist’, thereby linking this to Shostakovich’s statement that ‘I tell him everything I remember about my works and myself’. But Shostakovich never mentions discussing his ‘youthful compositions’ (cf. the exact quotation above); he merely expresses surprise that the musicologist was already aware of them. Still more shocking is the fact that Mitchinson, a historian with a doctorate from Harvard University, is content merely to ‘speculate’ on the meaning of Litvinova’s text, even if, in his own words, his theory is ‘not airtight’. In fact, Mitchinson’s speculation (1) has been rejected by Litvinova herself and (2) is, by his own admission, inconsistent with the actual statement. Immediately after Mitchinson first aired his theory in Lingua Franca, Dmitry Feofanov telephoned Litvinova on 22 April 2000 to inquire if Shostakovich’s statement about meeting ‘constantly’ with ‘a young Leningrad 84 This Russian phrase mixes plural and singular, and should be ‘detskie sochineniya’. 85 Paul Mitchinson, A Shostakovich Casebook, pp. 320–21, note 33. 86 Volkov, Preface to Testimony, p. xiv. Mitchinson further distorts Volkov’s words in A Shostakovich Casebook, p. 305: ‘Unfortunately, Volkov says, the Soviet censor expunged these biographical details when the book was published in 1971’ (emphasis added). He cites Testimony, p. xv, but here is the actual passage: ‘Shostakovich’s preface had been cut severely, and it dealt only with the present — there were no reminiscences’. Clearly, Shostakovich’s expunged ‘reminiscences’ need not have been limited to ‘biographical details’ of his own life. 23 musicologist’ might refer instead to their earlier collaboration on the preface to Young Composers of Leningrad, given that her last ‘conversation’ with Shostakovich was, according to her memoirs, in 1970 or 1971. Litvinova stated that she believes the reference was to work on Testimony and that it was made in 1972–74. Moreover, she confirmed that, contrary to Mitchinson’s interpretation of her text, she did speak with Shostakovich after 1970–71 and visited him when he was sick, at his apartment. In a lengthy footnote, Mitchinson quotes Feofanov’s letter to the editor of Lingua Franca, summarizing the main points of his conversation with Litvinova. 87 He concludes, however, that ‘Feofanov’s letter should be treated with some caution. [. . .] Nevertheless, there is still the possibility that he has accurately quoted and represented what Litvinova told him over the phone’. 88 If Mitchinson has any doubts about Litvinova’s statements to Dmitry Feofanov concerning the seemingly contradictory testimony in her memoirs or about his own less than airtight theory, why, one wonders, has he not contacted her for himself? He provides two reasons: (1) Lawyers traditionally place greater weight on a witness’s earlier testimony, for good reason — witnesses often incorporate what they have heard or read much later into their earlier memories. A case in point: Litvinova allegedly told Feofanov, ‘I understood it [her conversation with Shostakovich] to be referring to Testimony’. This is unlikely, since Testimony was not published until 1979 — many years after the conversation took place. (2) Given the vivid and precise character of her published testimony, I find it unnecessary to subject Flora Pavlovna, now eighty-one, to any further ‘cross-examination’. 89 Even Mitchinson must know that memoirs are never error-free and that sometimes readers find mistakes and contradictions that were not perceived even by their authors (cf. note 545 below). Therefore, to rule out contacting Litvinova (a living witness) merely on the presumption that her memory was better in the late 1980s than ten years later is not only highly questionable, but a most curious methodology for a historian. Indeed, given Litvinova’s advanced age, one would think that Mitchinson 87 First published in Lingua Franca, 10/8, November 2000, pp. 7 and 64. Also cf. Mitchinson, A Shostakovich Casebook, p. 321, note 33: [Dmitry Feofanov:] I called Flora Pavlovna Litvinova and asked her whether her statement referred to a conversation with Shostakovich before work on Testimony had begun (1971) or after [. . .]. Her answer — ‘I ran into Shostakovich here and there until his death. The conversation in question could have taken place in 1972, or 1973, or 1974’. Question: Do you think Shostakovich was referring to Testimony or some other work he did with Volkov? Answer: ‘I understood it to be referring to Testimony’. 88 Mitchinson, A Shostakovich Casebook, p. 321, note 33. 89 Ibid., p. 322, note 33. 24 would want to contact her sooner rather than later. 90 The word ‘understood’, which Mitchinson also questions above, is merely a reference to her understanding at the time she penned her reminiscences, and hence is in the past tense. At the time Shostakovich mentioned his meetings with ‘a young Leningrad musicologist’, clearly she had no idea that Testimony was in progress nor that Volkov was the musicologist. Finally, if Mitchinson truly believes that the ‘precise character of [Litvinova’s] published testimony’ makes any ‘cross-examination’ unnecessary, why did he say that his theory is ‘not airtight’ and, in an email to Allan Ho, express still other doubts: This is a dev[i]lishly uncertain issue, and almost no aspect of it has an unambiguous import, as I’m sure you know. . . . But the Litvinova issue is an interesting one — I would have loved to have gone on at length about it in my article, but it was simply too technical a point. Let me elaborate somewhat, since this was my theory entirely, which came to me while I was painstakingly trying to establish a timeline of Volkov’s meetings, Litvinova’s recollections, etc. [. . .] I thought and thought about Litvinova’s quote, and it trouble[d] me for days. But she says that her ‘last’ conversation with DDS took place in 1970 or 1971 [. . .]. But in SR Volkov states that his meetings for Testimony began in 1971 [. . .]. So Litvinova must be wrong about something. The phrase ‘detskie sochineniia’ really jumped out at me when I was reading Litvinova — this sounded like what Volkov was talking to DDS about for Young Leningrad Composers rather than for Testimony. Then there is the issue of Litvinova saying that DDS told her that he and Volkov met, then at the next meeting he would go over it with Volkov to approve it, or something like that. But that doesn’t fit Volkov’s description of [T]estimony — he talks about his ‘mounds of shorthand notes’, which he slowly shaped into a manuscript. What DDS approved was the manuscript, which couldn’t have been put together in early 1971! Of course there are problems to this theory — they’re too obvious to mention. 91 What are these problems, too obvious to mention? First, the published Preface to Young Composers of Leningrad is only two pages long (cf. the facsimile below). Even if quite a bit of material was cut, it is unlikely that this collaboration would have required ‘constant’ meetings. 90 Ibid., p. 322, note 33, acknowledges that Allan Ho, in a post on DSCH-list in January 2002 Download Do'stlaringiz bilan baham: 
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